Colorado State Rep. Joe Salazar apologized for rape comment
The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Department of Public Safety has updated an online statement advising female students to consider a variety of unusual actions if they are attacked, including vomiting, urinating and claiming that they are menstruating.
The advisory was updated Monday evening, just hours after the Colorado state House of Representatives passed a package of gun control bills that includes one that would make it illegal for people with concealed weapons permits to carry guns on the campuses of public universities. The bills still have to go to the state Senate and governor.
Some of the pieces of advice which were updated Monday evening on the university's public safety website are ones that many would find familiar, from running away without looking back to "yelling, hitting or biting" your attacker.
But the following two suggestions are a little stranger and are
already causing quite the outcry on social media: "Tell your attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating," and "Vomiting or urinating may also convince the attacker to leave you alone."
These less-conventional methods for fighting off a would-be rapist are apparently part of
Rape Aggression Defense Systems, a class that the school's public safety department promotes as a means for female students to boost their self-defense skills.
But the fact that the site providing the pointers was updated at 6:30 p.m. Monday suggests that the move may have been motivated by
the Colorado House's passage on Monday of
HB 1226, which would ban all people -- including concealed-weapons permit holders -- from carrying guns on the campuses of the state's public universities.
The House
passed the bill on Monday by a vote of 34-31, but not before it became the center of a major controversy when
Democratic state Rep. Joe Salazar made comments during Friday's debate arguing that students should not have access to guns to protect themselves from being raped.